The common house fly and related pests are annoying and present a health hazard when flying around a person's food, or garbage, or when landing on a meal of exposed food to be eaten by a person. Because they have sponging mouthparts, house flies cannot bite humans. However, they have been demonstrated to mechanically transmit the causative agents of diarrhea, cholera, yaws, dysentery, and eye infections. Flies are also implicated as mechanical vectors of Shigella and Salmonella, the latter being a pathogen responsible for food poisoning.
There are many devices available to combat flies such as a fly swatter, an adhesive fly strip and chemical spray.
U.S. Patent Application 2005/0005503, Bragg, shows a hanging fly trap in the form of an artificial plant basket. This device must be hung out of sight and so some effort is needed to monitor the number of flies caught by the trap and then retrieve the trap for cleaning and replacement of adhesive surfaces.
U.S. Patent Application 2005/0126069, Taylor and Lambert, discloses an ornate household fly trap which relies upon ultraviolet light to attract the insect and an adhesive surface to catch it. This device uses a power source and is very complex. It is therefore expensive to manufacture and the purchase price to a consumer is high.
There is a need for a simple, safe and visually attractive fly trap that can be manufactured and sold inexpensively, and does not rely upon pheromones and UV light sources for effectiveness.